Btw for those who don't know or weren't around, there was an idea for creating a super conference was batted around in 1959. And the NCAA caused this one, too.
You have to remember there weren't "really" any rules followed back then for subsidizing players. The NCAA's ability to adminiser punishment came in 1952, when they shut down Kentucky's basketball program for a year in the wake of a point-shaving scandal. Walter Byers - the guy who kept us from being able to see games until the Supreme Court said he couldn't - emerged as a powerhouse from that episode. All the conferences DID realize they needed some regulation - and when the NCAA socked it to Kentucky, they became the de facto and unelected judges of the whole thing.
That same year of scandal (1951), there was a long-running 'north/south' war going on between the California teams in the PCC and the Oregon and Washington contingent. They all began accusing one another of lowering academic standards to let players into school. The NCAA investigated and found that an Oregon Webfoots booster had paid monies to players with the knowledge of Coach Jim Aiken. He resigned. In retaliation, Oregon suggested that UCLA's head coach Red Saunders be investigated. UCLA's Chancellor promised to review it internally (ha ha), but after a five-year probe with former players testifying, they determined UCLA had, in fact, violated the PCC codes and hit them with three years' probation coming right after they won their first national title. UCLA thus became the first team in NCAA history to get sanctioned upon winning the UPI title.
You can probably guess what happened next. UCLA went with, "But we weren't the only school doing this," and pointed the finger everywhere else. (To their credit, they never denied it - to their discredit, they built the most corrupt basketball power in NCAA history). Then the PCC fined Washington, USC, and Cal for similar violations.
Then it got political.
The governor of California at that time (Goodwin Knight) was a Stanford grad who went to high school in Los Angeles, and he felt UCLA wasn't doing anything that wasn't going on at other schools, that the punishment didn't fit the crime. UCLA then decided they were done with the PCC and leaving. Governor Knight proposed that the California schools pull out and make their own conference. UCLA was on the verge of withdrawal, but they were talked out of it at the last minute. The following May (1957), the PCC held a vote that ended 5-4 in favor of UCLA continuing in the PCC. Stanford, Washington St, Oregon, and Idaho (the four schools not hit with sanctions) voted to expel UCLA from the PCC.
At that point, the PCC was done, the commissioner fired, the conference dissolved, and the files in the offices destroyed.
In response, the desire was to build a national mega-conference that would touch all parts of the USA. Air travel was becoming fashionable (the Dodgers and Giants moved west for the 1958 season).
The conference would have included:
USC
UCLA
Washington
Stanford
Cal
Air Force
Army
Navy
Notre Dame
Duke
Georgia Tech
Penn State
It fell apart because the Pentagon with 3 service academies in that situation went bonkers. But that kind of expansion back then also would have altered the course of the game, too.
